The Green Bible!

The Green Bible is printed on recycled paper and all the things about God's creation is highlighted in green. There are contributions from Brian McLaren, NT Wright, Desmond Tutu, and others.

Wow! If there are no highlights in green, I think I wanna get one... but I don't just want to read the "green" passages, so I need to think. (I was searching for NRSV Bible when I found this, coz I only have the NT NRSV at home...)

After reading more about it on Amazon.com, I'm seriously thinking about getting one... but I realise 10/7/08 means Oct, instead of Jul, so it's not available now, forgot about the American style for dates... sigh...

Why did you become a Christian?? (Part 2)

As mentioned in the previous post, at least one of the reviewers commented NT Wright's lack of mention on hell/sinning in his new book. I have a bit more on it today.

There's one chapter in Surprised by Hope on "Purgatory, Paradise, Hell". Sin was mentioned and NT Wright proposed a view on hell which is those who persist in sinning will end up in their dehumanization as they lost the image of God.

After he wrote about his proposed "hell", he did continue to say, "I am well aware that I have now wandered into territory that no one can claim to have mapped... The last I want is for anyone to supposed that I (or anyone else) know very much all about this. Nor do I want anyone to supposed I enjoy speculating in this manner... I should be glad to be proved wrong but not at the cost of the foundational claims that this world is the good creation of the one true God and that he will at the end bring about that judgment at which the whole creation will rejoice."

I think this is a reasonable proposal and he offered it in a humble way.

I do love the way he ended this chapter.

"But the most important thing to say at the end of this discussion... is that heaven and hell are not, so to speak, what the whole game is about. This is one of the central surprises in the Christian hope. The whole point of my argument so far is that the question of what happens to me after death is not the major central framing question that centuries of theological tradition have supposed. The New testament, true to its Old Testament roots, regularly insists that the major central framing question is that of God's purpose of rescue and re-creation for the whole world, the entire cosmos. The destiny of individual human beings must be understood within that context-- not simply in the sense that we are only part of a much larger picture but also in the sense that part of the whole point of being saved in the present is so that we can play a vital role within that larger picture and purpose. And that in turn makes us realise that the question of our own destiny, in terms of the altenatives of joy or woe, is probably the wrong way of looking at the whole question. The question ought to be, How will God's new creation come? and then, How will we humans contribute to that renewal of creation and to the fresh projects that the creator God will launch in his new world?...

Maybe we are faced with in our own day is a similar challenge: to focus not on the question of which human beings God is going to take to heaven and how he is going to do it but on the question of how God is going to redeem and renew his creation through human beings and how he is going to rescue those humans themselves as part of the process but not as the point of it all."

I think this is a rather good answer to the question I asked.

Why did you become a Christian?? (Part 1)

Last Sunday, someone asked a question about whether one can still recognises his/her family in heaven, because in the Bible, Jesus said, there won't be any marital relationship. And it is very difficult to convince people to believe in Jesus when they won't know their family/friends in heaven anymore.

My question is: Is Christianity only about getting to heaven??

It's just sad that so many people (EVEN CHRISTIANS) think that way.

I'm reading NT Wright's Surprised by Hope. I have read a lot of his stuff before, so most of the stuff in the first half of the book sounds familiar to me. =P

I agree with his view of heaven being on earth, rather than somewhere UP in the sky. I think most of the people who read his books agree with him on this. Most of the people don't like the political emphasis he had on this whole "heaven" business.

I haven't read through the application part yet, I had to read through the whole book because I got to introduce this "new" (I know it is not new, but most Christians don't know about it) heaven concept, and I think I have to be balanced and include the opposite views as well.

Someone on Amazon reviews said Wright did not mention much about sin, I don't know if he didn't mention it because he doesn't believe it is important in this whole business, or if it is because like what he said in the book, if a football commentator who doesn't talk about baseball, it doesn't mean he doesn't believe in baseball! Since so many people are talking about it, and so he didn't? I don't know.

I don't see why the removal of sin cannot co-exist with the new heaven and earth. Jesus' victory against sin is also part of it. hmm...

Got to figure out a way to present this whole complicated concept... and so many controversial points...

I've started listening to the lectures on New Testament Foundations I got from Regent College, Rikk Watts seemed to really agree on what NT Wright said about Israel stuff. hmm... I think I need to listen to some opposing views.

Will of Power- thoughts an from the history of spiritual theology class and mp3 I got from church library

Spiritual discipline is a neglected tradition among evangelicals. Monks learned submission to God through submission to their abbots, and forfeit their own "rights" by obeying others. In this world and age, we often stress the importance of our right. Men are poor in their endurance and often have weak will of power to do what we need to do.

People who are weak in their will of power often have the following problems:
1. tardiness
2. breaking their promises
3. failing to resist temptations
4. laziness
5. failing to obey God

Post-modernity encourages
1. Consumerism (whatever we want, we can buy)
2. Sense of Control/patience (e.g. with MTRs, we don't need to wait for buses, with mobile phone, we can find anyone at anytime, with computer & internet, we can find information within seconds)

Some of the ways we use to practice in our daily life (that I think maybe useful for me)
1. Submitting to your family (to learn to forfeit our rights)
2. Stop watching TV for one week (to learn that we can live without certain things we think we need, but the fact is we can live without them)

(Thoughts and notes from the lectures on History of Spiritual Theology and the Baptist U lecture MP3 from Dr. Milton Wan)

I am weak in will power... maybe I should start practising...

Course materials received

Take a look at these... it costs me more than HKD 10000... they are sent by courier to me from Regent College for continuing studies...

New books

My "trophies" from Tien Dao today!! With theotokos' Tien Dao card, so I got 20% off all the books, hahahaha!!



Initially I just intended to go and buy 二千年靈修神學 which is the textbook for the spiritual theology course I just started attending. And perhaps Surprised by Hope because I saw from Tien Dao website it was supposed to be available in the TST Tien Dao. (however, it was not... =P)

However, I found two newly published translated works of NT Wright!! Just when I was wondering how to get Chinese material for the fellowship meeting I suggested (to learn more about stuff written by NT Wright), I found these two books!!! YEAH!! No need for me to do the translation on my own and a lot cheaper than the original English version. Though I hate reading translated books, I have to get the translated versions, it's difficult to get people to start reading NT Wright stuff with the language barrier, even though most people I know can read English, reading theological stuff in English is fairly difficult for most.

The good thing is that it is a lot easier to get people to read them now!

Surprised by Hope will be transferred to TST shop for me later, so I'll buy it later.

Intentions & Celebrations

As the preview pages from my Amazon account exceeded the limit, these are my own translations from the Chinese version of Marva Dawn's book. =P (As only the Chinese translation is available from my church library...) Any mistake is mine. =P

In the chapter Embracing Intentionality, Marva Dawn mentioned what we think is important. And we need to reconfirm out status as God's people, even after suffering, humiliation, disappointment and failures. For Jews, keeping Sabbath reminds them of their own identity even when the Temple is no longer present.

Marva Dawn also mentioned an organisation for developmentally disabled named l'Arche, what we can learn from them on how to celebrate.

Michael Downey emphasizes that the celebrations there continue "no matter how deep the suffering"-that, in fact, the celebration "intensifies as suffering deepens". We do not need to wait until suffering is over to celebrate, and the festivity itself can improve our communication with God. Sabbath must include celebration, even during the Holocaust, and celebrations on the Sabbath helped the Jews in concentration camps to maintain their courage.

Celebration is not compensation, joy from profound suffering will be nurtured during celebrations. Celebration means accepting life and seeing that life is indeed precious.